Japanese Knives

Prepping vegetables is no longer a chore; it is an exhilarating, slightly dangerous, fully engaged experience! My new Hattori chef's knife arrived from Japan: a gleaming silver art piece of layered Damascus steel both beautiful and wickedly sharp. Touch the edge to a cucumber and just the weight of the knife propels it cleanly through to the cutting board, no effort required. The slices are translucently thin. But this is not a knife for the careless; one slip could mean the loss of a digit. After all, generations of Japanese sword smiths are behind the crafting of this blade. Gruesomely, the sharpness of the Japanese samurai sword was tested by seeing how many human bodies it could cut through in a single swipe. I'm keenly reminded of this when the Hattori comes close to my fingers; slicing vegetables becomes an example of the exhortation to "be in the moment". One has to be extra alert and focussed when using a knife like this, so I experience the knife, the vegetable, the cutting board and my fingers with heightened awareness--is this the true Zen of cooking? This is not a low maintenance piece of cutlery. You cannot simply use a sharpening steel or commercial knife sharpener. It requires three whetstones; five passes back and forth across the first stone starting with the tip and working up towards the handle, again with the second, then the third. Sharpening takes about 20 minutes: a commitment to the upkeep of the blade, but resulting in pure pleasure for those of us who love the process of cooking as much as savoring the result.

I've had two other pieces of Japanese cutlery in my kitchen for years, both of which were purchased in L.A.'s Little Tokyo: a yanagiba for delicate slicing of fish for sushi and a Shigemitsu deba bocho for the heavier fish prep. Otherwise, my block set of stainless steel has plodded along for many years. Why upgrade my cutlery now? Because after a lifetime of learning how to create the tastes I want, I'm looking for a better presentation--clean, precise edges being part of a polished look. It took two days of intensive research online to decide on the Hattori HD 7 Gyuto and the soon to arrive Misono 130mm Sweden Steel Petty. Two days' worth of research yields only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what there is to know about chef's knives. In brief, in the European tradition, there were essentially 3 types of knives used in prepping vegetables: the "cook's knife" or "French knife" which is long (around 300mm or less) and broad with a curved belly making a 'rocking-horse' motion while slicing, the paring knife (around 190mm) that fits easily into the hand and used mainly, as can be surmised by the name, for paring and decorative work, and the utility knife which is halfway between the two. Knives were commonly made of carbonized steel, which takes a very sharp edge but required vigilant maintenance to avoid rust and to keep the edge. The advent of stainless steel eliminated the need for such rigorous maintenance but the edge was hard to keep honed. Modern stainless for knives is made of steel with added carbon to try and improve the knife edge; there are dozens of types of steel: Cromova 18, Cowry-X, MC66, etc. and several chef's forums online where the merits of each is debated (ChefTalk is one). Layered steel is discussed below.

There is another line of kitchen knives originating in Japan. During the US occupation of Japan after WWII, the creation of samurai swords was prohibited and the generations of knowledge about the hand-forging of blades was nearly lost. Some of the sword smith families, primarily in the city of Sakai carried this knowledge forward into the present and are making kitchen knives in the same tradition. A truly hand-made chef's knife costs thousands of dollars, so they also manufacture affordable knives using factory manufacture with some hand finishing.
Dozens of specialized knives appear in a Japanese professional kitchen, including a Takohiki just for preparing octopus and a Udon-Kiri for slicing noodles. The main tools for prepping vegetables in a Japanese kitchen are hybrids of the tradtional and modern. A Santoku is the "cook's knife" equivalent (the Japanese style is a Gyuto), a Nakiri is a thinner version of the Chinese cleaver and the Petty spans the size from paring to utility knife. The traditional Japanese knife (though they now make traditional forms with European edges) is straight on one edge and beveled on the other, or beveled just 30 percent on one side and 70 degrees on the other. This also makes a sharper edge possible and gives a cleaner cut. European style knives are bevelled evenly, 50/50, like a "V".

What made samurai swords so sharp and capable of the grisly body tests described above was the technique of lamination and layering. The Japanese discovered a solution to the dilemma of steel--that softer steel is sharper but isn't as durable and hard steel, though it withstands shock and force better is not as sharp. They came up with a method of encasing a core of softer steel inside a protective outer sheath with the soft steel exposed at the edge for maximum sharpness. Their swords were not only layered from hard outer to softer inside, but each of the steels was hammered out repeatedly and folded over, creating layers within the steel and driving out any impurities that could weaken the metal. Small crystals in the metal, some barely visible to the naked eye, give the hand-forged Japanese blade a misty glow, the patterns of which are used by fine art sword experts and collectors to assess the age and provenance of a samurai sword. If you have the chance to see a fine example of this artistry, please appreciate the beauty that has gone into the creation of it. There are some fine blades in the "Lords of the Samurai" exhibit at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

(*note: since this post, I bought a Shun Chef's knife at Sur la Table and have been using it the most of all my large knives as it has more weight than the Hattori, making it more useful for the wider range of cutting jobs. I still love to use my Hattori Gyuto for fine knife work with vegetables. I also bought an inexpensive Swiss Kuhn Rikon that never needs sharpening and use it more than my expensive Wusthoff or Misono. Just $9.95!)